Woodstock Suspect Is Still At Large

August 24, 1988|By Bob Logan.

Despite numerous alleged sightings, surveys from the air and help on the ground, Woodstock police were frustrated Tuesday in their search for the 19-year-old college student sought in the fatal bludgeoning of a Woodstock couple and the wounding of their daughter and son.

Even with a deluge of tips from McHenry County residents, use of a plane donated by Galt Airport north of town and assistance from McHenry County sheriff`s police and Illinois state troopers, Woodstock Police Chief Herbert J. Pitzman said police have been unable to locate Richard J. Church or the 1981 blue Dodge pickup truck in which he allegedly made his escape Sunday morning.

``We don`t have him, and we don`t have the truck,`` Pitzman said Tuesday evening after returning from Crystal Lake, where police acting on a tip had surrounded a house only to come up empty-handed.

Church, also of Woodstock, is named on warrants for the murder of Raymond Ritter, 43, and his wife, Ruth Ann, 45, and the attack on Colleen, 17, and her younger brother, Matthew, 10, early Sunday morning in their home on the north side of that McHenry County city. Colleen Ritter was continuing her recovery Tuesday after surgery in Northern Illinois Medical Center in McHenry, and Matthew was reported improving in Memorial Hospital in Woodstock.

The attack occurred early Sunday after Colleen reportedly tried to break off a 2 1/2-year dating relationship that had begun when she and Church were students at Marian Central Catholic High School in Woodstock. He graduated from there in 1987 and was registered to begin his second year at Northern Illinois University in De Kalb. She completed her junior year at the high school last spring.

The failure of police to turn up any trace of Church after three days of intensive manhunt caused some investigators familiar with the case to speculate that the young man may have carried out an earlier threat made to the Ritter family to commit suicide, but Pitzman said there is no indication that is the case. ``Until we locate the truck, I wouldn`t want to speculate on that,`` he said. ``If we find it abandoned, I might start thinking along those lines.

``There`s no way of figuring out where a kid would go in this kind of situation. All we can do is track down every lead, and they`re still coming in,`` Pitzman added.

The murders were the fourth and fifth in Woodstock since 1980..

The person charged with the fatal stabbing of Steven Feldt, 29, in his apartment on Aug. 17, 1982, was acquitted by a jury; no charges were ever filed in the Jan. 28, 1983, fatal beating of Mary Calista Barter, 67, in her home; and a conviction was obtained in the Dec. 26, 1984, stabbing death of Rodney Jenkins, 24, during an altercation in a downtown Woodstock street.